The Night Sky

[URL unfurl="true"]https://time.com/6293168/northern-lights-u-s-this-week/[/URL]

I won’t be seeing that?

Looks promising - Monday 7/24

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.netflix.com/title/81473680?g=576e09e5-a235-4603-8cd3-479737b8409a&lkid=URL_PRIMARY_HERO_IMAGE_0&lnktrk=EVO&trkid=13710079[/URL]

tonight @ 8:31 out of Wallops Island Flight Center VA

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive[/URL]

A SMASHING SUCCESS!!!

[HEADING=2][SIZE=7]Smashing success: NASA’s asteroid strike results in a big nudge[/SIZE][/HEADING]
[pressherald.com/2022/10/11/smashing-success-nasas-asteroid-strike-results-in-a-big-nudge/]('https://www.pressherald.com/2022/10/11/smashing-success-nasas-asteroid-strike-results-in-a-big-nudge/')

By MARCIA DUNN October 11, 2022

A plume of dust and debris is blasted from the surface of the asteroid Dimorphos by NASA’s DART spacecraft after it impacted on Sept. 26, 2022, captured by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab’s SOAR telescope in Chile. The expanding, comet-like tail is more than 6,000 miles long. Teddy Kareta, Matthew Knight/NOIRLab via Associated Press

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A spacecraft that plowed into a small, harmless asteroid millions of miles away succeeded in shifting its orbit, NASA said Tuesday in announcing the results of its save-the-world test.
The space agency attempted the first test of its kind two weeks ago to see if in the future a killer rock could be nudged out of Earth’s way.

The Dart spacecraft carved a crater into the asteroid Dimorphos on Sept. 26, hurling debris out into space and creating a cometlike trail of dust and rubble stretching several thousand miles. It took days of telescope observations to determine how much the impact altered the path of the 525-foot asteroid around its companion, a much bigger space rock.

Before the impact, the moonlet took 11 hours and 55 minutes to circle its parent asteroid. Scientists had hoped to shave off 10 minutes but NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the impact altered the asteroid’s orbit by about 32 minutes.

“This mission shows that NASA is trying to be ready for whatever the universe throws at us,” Nelson said during a briefing at NASA headquarters in Washington.

Neither asteroid posed a threat to Earth – and still don’t as they continue their journey around the sun. That’s why scientists picked the pair for the world’s first attempt to alter the position of a celestial body.
Launched last year, the vending machine-size Dart – short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test – was destroyed when it slammed into the asteroid 7 million miles away at 14,000 mph.

The test cost $325 million.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.yahoo.com/news/nasa-asteroid-blunder-unleashes-boulder-160735199.html[/URL]

Looks like God is asking WTH is going on???

[HEADING=2][SIZE=6]The Biggest Question Mark in Astronomy? You’re Looking at It.[/SIZE][/HEADING]
Close scrutiny of a recent image from the Webb Space Telescope revealed some questionable punctuation.

The astronomers will tell you it is just an optical illusion, a pair of galaxies caught in the act of mating as seen from the wrong angle. Happens all the time.

In the 1960 and 70s, [Halton Arp]('https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/science/space/halton-c-arp-astronomer-who-challenged-big-bang-theory-dies-at-86.html'), an astronomer at Hale Observatories in Southern California, caused a ruckus by asserting that galaxies millions of light-years apart according to conventional cosmological calculations — but which appeared superimposed together in the sky — were interacting locally. His claim cast doubt on the Big Bang theory of the universe. Astronomers now agree that he was wrong.

Now [a genuine question mark has been discovered]('https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2023/news-2023-131'), in the corner of a recent Webb telescope observation of [a pair of dust clouds known as Herbig-Haro 46/47]('https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2023/news-2023-131') that are in the process of forming into two stars. The discovery made a splash on social media. “Ze space mall information kiosk has been found by JWST,” a commenter joked on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.

Chris Britt, an astronomer at the Baltimore-based Space Telescope Science Institute, which runs the Webb telescope, attempted to explain. “This particular pair is so far away, it’s hard to make out much detail,” he said in an email exchange. “But there are some similar looking galaxy mergers that have been seen closer to us, including [this one called II Zwicky 96]('https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/2008/16/2292-Image.html?news=true').”

If you accept the spooky rules of quantum mechanics and the premise, as Einstein put it, that God plays dice with the universe, then you have to accept that chance and randomness are a fundamental bedrock of reality. In such a universe, where the laws of physics have been grinding away for 14 billion years, coincidences are unforeseeable but inevitable.

Still, there are times when it’s worth stepping back to listen to “the music,” as Einstein once referred to the beauty and mystery of the cosmos. You are free to consider that question mark as alien graffiti, a comment on both their and our relation to existence. Point being, we’ve barely begun to know anything — that’s why we build telescopes.

Once the Webb has completed its rounds of investigations two decades from now, we might know a bit more about how this bowl of stars works. But we still won’t know why we’re here. That question mark, our profound cosmic ignorance, is one of the great gifts of science.

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.facebook.com/reel/230117876691134[/URL]

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.yahoo.com/news/green-comet-streak-across-earth-120025624.html[/URL]

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.yahoo.com/news/green-comet-streak-across-earth-120025624.html[/URL]

I was up at 4:30am to take a peek for this hearing about it on the weather ch.
Did not see anything, the sky was thick with Humidity

Hopefully Tuesday will be clear.

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.yahoo.com/news/planet-survives-catastrophic-end-solar-193606200.html[/URL]

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.sciencenews.org/article/astronomers-renaming-magellanic-clouds[/URL]

When they're complete the night sky will never be the same....

“At the moment, there are 18 constellations that we know are planned all over the world,” Dr. Eggl said. “The total number of satellites is a stunning half a million that people are planning to put up there. This is 100 times more than we already have.”

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/02/science/bluewalker3-ast-spacemobile-astronomy.html[/URL]

The smoky now

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.yahoo.com/news/rare-ring-fire-solar-eclipse-090804284.html[/URL]

Jupiter by the JWST

Although I'm pretty sure we're all socked in tonight, but if you get a clearing by Orion, the Orionids Meteor shower will be going on. The Orionids are remnants of Halley's Comet.

Although I'm pretty sure we're all socked in tonight, but if you get a clearing by Orion, the Orionids Meteor shower will be going on. The Orionids are remnants of Halley's Comet.

Yep, like usual for these events socked in here

[URL unfurl="true"]https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/11/its-almost-showtime-for-spacexs-massive-starship-rocket/[/URL]

The EU's Euclid telescope is online, some of the wide field views in the article are stunning!
[U][/U]
[[U]NY Times[/U]]('https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/07/science/euclid-telescope-photos.html')

The EU's Euclid telescope is online, some of the wide field views in the article are stunning!

[[U]NY Times[/U]]('https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/07/science/euclid-telescope-photos.html')

Some context on the first picture, this from today's Astronomy Picture of the Day emphasizing that every point of light in the photo is a GALAXY!!

Explanation: There's a new space telescope in the sky: [Euclid]('https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Euclid'). Equipped with two large panoramic cameras, [Euclid captures]('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid_(spacecraft)') light from the [visible]('https://science.nasa.gov/ems/09_visiblelight/') to the near-[infrared]('https://science.nasa.gov/ems/07_infraredwaves/'). It took five hours of observing for [Euclid's 1.2-meter diameter primary mirror]('https://sci.esa.int/web/euclid/-/57042-euclid-primary-mirror') to capture, through its [sharp optics](''), the 1000+ galaxies in the [Perseus cluster]('https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110712.html'), which lies 250 million [light years]('https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/light-year/') away. More than 100,000 galaxies are visible in the background, some as [far away]('https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap220316.html') as 10 billion light years. The revolutionary nature of [Euclid]('https://www.euclid-ec.org/public/science/') lies in the combination of its wide field of view (twice the area of the full moon), its high angular resolution (thanks to its [620 Megapixel camera]('https://irfu.cea.fr/dap/en/Phocea/Vie_des_labos/Ast/ast.php?t=fait_marquant&id_ast=4736')), and its infrared vision, which captures both images and [spectra]('https://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/s/Spectroscopy'). [Euclid's initial surveys]('https://www.euclid-ec.org/public/data/surveys/'), covering a third of the sky and recording over 2 billion galaxies, will enable a [study]('

Very disappointing news, but pretty obvious based on recent events...

[HEADING=1]NASA’s Moon Race Is Running Late[/HEADING]
NASA says it will land astronauts on the moon again in December 2025. But it will almost certainly miss that target, perhaps by years

NASA astronauts last walked on the moon in December 1972. In 2019, NASA announced Artemis, a return-to-the-moon program. Artemis I, an uncrewed test flight, launched in 2022. The first moon landing is Artemis III.

Last week, the Government Accountability Office assessed the moon landing’s prospects.

Although NASA and its contractors have made progress, Artemis III is “unlikely to occur in 2025 as planned,” the G.A.O. concluded.

The G.A.O’s report focused on two delayed pieces of the program: a lunar lander that is a version of the Starship spacecraft from Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and the spacesuits needed during a moonwalk.

Two test launches of Starship failed to reach orbit, and key milestones in the lander’s development have already been delayed

SpaceX’s timeline is also much speedier than most major NASA projects. If Starship takes the average time it will not be ready until 2027.

Axiom Space of Houston must complete major work on the lunar spacesuits, including a NASA requirement that the suits provide astronauts with an hour of emergency oxygen, more than any previous spacesuit.

Before Artemis III, NASA must complete Artemis II. That flight will take four astronauts around the moon in another spacecraft, Orion, but not land on the surface. That flight is facing potential delays, too.

Engineers are studying why Orion’s heat shield eroded more than expected during Artemis I.

NASA continues to plan to launch Artemis II late in 2024. But it could be pushed back if major changes are needed to the Orion capsule.

If NASA’s lunar landing slips years into the future, there could be another international moon race, with China.

In May, a space official said China plans to put astronauts on the moon’s surface by 2030.